RIP dad

Perhaps you all thought that I was in the powder room for the last two weeks, but unfortunately, I wasn't. I had to go back to Iowa to see my dad, who died on April 21st.

While this is a very sad thing, and I miss him terribly, I am happy that his passing was fairly painless and quick. In January, they found he had a tumor on his lung. He went through the usual Chemo/Radiation thing with flying colors, and had just started the second round of treatment when he came down with Pneumonia and was dead in a week.

Dad hadn't smoked in thirty-five years, so the whole lung cancer thing was a big suprise. But as he said himself when my folks called to tell me the news, "we all gotta go sometime"

The people at the hospital in Council Bluffs (Mercy) were great. When the time came that we had to take him off the ventilator, they stayed there with us and made him as comfortable as possible for the brief time he stayed alive.

After he died, he had a big funeral at St. Peters, followed by a nice lunch. I saw all sorts of relatives I hadn't seen for years, who had all sorts of interesting stories.

Dad could be very difficult at times, and very obstinate. But he could also be a real peach of a guy. A liberal Democrat to the end, he couldn't stand Bush, which is always a good thing. He was also a great provider, a voracious reader, a fine attorney and a passable carpenter.

So if there is an afterlife, hopefully Dad is off somewhere with Aunt Eleanor, eating one of those fabulous sour cream and raisin pies.

Another Brick in the Wall

We had some sad news the weekend before last here at danlangdon.com. Our Aunt Eleanor has died. Alleviating it somewhat (you have to be in my family to understand this) is that she died on the same day as the pope. More on that later...

Elenor is the second loss in that which once seemed invincible: My five Aunts.

These Aunts, it should be understood, are in a special class. I had other aunts (mostly on my dad’s side of the family) but the Aunts I speak of are my mother’s sisters – A veritable Mount Rushmore of (mostly) Big-Busted and (always) full-Bodied women that formed a sort of pantheon of my childhood.

They are (in more or less order of their age – the Aunts don’t give out that sort of thing voluntarily) as follows:

Aunt Mary Jo: Definitely the matriarch of the flock. A Grandma Walton sort of presence, who bore a strong physical resemblance to my maternal grandmother, who died six years before I was born (if you were a 5’5” woman who had born 12 children in 14 years, you would die young also) She was a no-nonsense woman who had met and married an amicable conductor on the Union Pacific Railroad, and had spent a good chunk of her life selling small appliances at the downtown Omaha Sears.

Always the consummate saleswoman, she and her husband (Uncle Joe) had entered into their golden years as the proprieters of a trailer park in Brownsville, Texas for other UP reiterees. After Joe died, she decided to move back to Omaha, where she managed to crowd all of her furniture into a small assisted living apartment, and harass her sisters and their offspring. Mary Jo went to her reward about ten years ago, much to her sister’s distresss and (unspoken) relief. That was the first chunk off of the mountain.

Aunt Eleanor: Married to Uncle Barney, (a real true to life "By Golly" sort of Rancher - unliked George W) She was a cross between a Far Side Lady and Vicky Lawrence’s character on “Moma’s Family”. Eleanor was a fabulous cook, a dutiful farmwife, an outstanding barkeep (later life) and a real sweetheart. When I was five, I expressed a devotion to her hand-canned sweet pickles, and she dutifully set aside quarts of these for me annually well into my college years.

Aunt Colleta: I still can’t figure out who is older, Aunt Coletta or my Mom. They are very close in years, and very close in heart. Aunt Coletta is a beautiful and smart woman who fell in love with a WWII veteran who decided to come back to Nebraska to be a farmer. She settled with him on the outskirts of Columbus, Nebraska, until he died about five years ago. (Uncle Marvin was a great man. Always full of Budweiser, but in a good way)

Aunt Coletta is still a nice old lady who does the Jumbo puzzle each week and chonically underrates herself. Afraid of flying, the only time she has ever been airborne was when she had a heart attack and was taken (unconscious) to Omaha via helecopter. She now lives alone in a tidy brick ranch in Columbus.

Aunt Marilyn: Definitely younger, but yet not the youngest, Marilyn was always sort of the Glamour Girl of the sisters. She was the only one to go to college, and met and married a dashing young Air Force officer who is still devoted to her after all these years. When I was very young, she and her husband and family were very mysterious. They had, after all, survived the devastating earthquake in Alaska, and were now living in Louisiana, wherever that was.

I still remember the first time I ever met Aunt Marilyn. I was asleep on the sofa in the “visitor blankets” that were set out in anticipation of their arrival, and was woken up by a very pretty woman who looked just liked my mother.

Aunt Aggie: The youngest, and definitely the brattiest, of the sisters. But also the most sarcastic and fun, in an unconvential sense. Mother of four boisterous boys, husband to a fabulously liberal agnostic and successful husband, she traveled through the country and had all sorts of great adventures. Although Uncle Larry has left us, Aggie is still very much alive, commenting bitterly on just about everything. She has a fabulous "boyfriend" who is very accepting of our somewhat iconoclastic family.

So there's the sisters. Mom also has several brothers, but they are kind of interchangeable and dull - always brooding over Nebraska Football.

Anyway, here's to Aunt Eleanor. The last years were pretty rough for the old girl - she died of Alzheimers - but if there is any justice in the universe, she is in the great galactic kitchen, baking a sour cream and raisin pie (which sounds gross, but you have to taste)

In her memory, I've named my "new" (or some would say "latest") stove after her. The O'Keefe & Merritt is now officially named Eleanor.

P.S. I forgot about the whole "more on this later" thing about Eleanor and the Pope dieing on the same day. While I have left my Catholicism far behind me, I still can't help but hope that there is some sort of Saint Peter at the Gates of Heaven sort of arrangement, and that John Paul and Eleanor are standing next to each other in line. It would absolutely make her day :-)